Hair Fun

Ever since I saw Becky's post about this web site, I've been wanting to try some of the cute hair styles out on my kids. Just another way to be creative, right? Here are some examples of all the ones we have tried so far.

This one is currently Miranda's favorite.


It's not very hard and it's quick, so it's a good one right before school. I'm not going to give specific directions because they are all available on GirlyDo's blog and she does much better with tutorials.


Pretty cute! The last few times I have done this one I have taken the two braids and braided them into one. It makes it a lot cleaner looking and easier to wrap around the pony tail. This picture was my first attempt.

Miranda also likes to have this look but with a "messy bun" instead of the pony. I'll show you an example of the bun down below...

This is Maddy with "rag curls" in her hair. Notice the tooth she is wiggling? This picture was taken Oct. 5th and that tooth is the one that just fell out a while ago.

I was very happy with the results of the rag curls. I was skeptical as Maddy's hair rarely takes curl at all, but these curls stayed in ALL day! Her hair is usually super straight!

We also did the rag curls in Miranda's hair and they lasted two full days! Her hair has lots of curl though, so this was not a surprise. Still, I like the look of the rag curls and the girls swear they are comfy to sleep with. Bonus!

This 'do' below we have actually done before just without the messy bun in the back. The girls call it soccer ball hair. It's pretty obvious why...

This is one of my favorites to do on the girls. It takes a little longer, but it will stay in and look cute for a few days. I usually have to fix the bun or ponytail in the back, but the elastics keep the front nice and tidy! This would be a great one for camping trips.

That's it so far, but Miranda now loves to get online with me to find a cute hairstyle for the day. I think I better stock up on elastics and bobby pins!

Halloween Catch-up

I have to start by saying that I LOVE Halloween in Arizona. No worrying about being too cold, or covering the costumes with coats or jackets. In fact, Maddy insisted on riding her scooter to school with her costume on.

She looked so cute with her cloak billowing out behind her! A little like the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz. . .but cuter.

Patrick, Miranda and I all joined Maddy in her class for a mini party. Lots of goodies and a Magic School Bus movie. That's partying 2nd grade style apparently. This picture was taken after the school parade, and after Maddy's whole sleeve fell off her costume. (she now knows costumes and monkey-bars don't mix!)

A few short hours after school, and two failed attempts to get the sleeve on the RIGHT way, we headed to our neighborhood trunk or treat event. Miranda was nice enough to let Maddy use her cloak, and instead of being Ginny Weasley, she got to be a princess. She looks really disappointed, doesn't she?

Well, maybe in this one she does.

I think Miranda will look a little like Ginny when she is older, don't you? I think it's the nose...

Patrick was adorable (as usual) and was great about keeping his costume on most of the night. I think it was only because I told him it was a Darth Vader costume. But hey, it worked!

Our toothless Hermoine looking way older than last year. Can I just put all of my kids on pause for the next few years? Please.

After the trunk or treat the kids all decided that they needed to check out "that one spooky house" on our street, so Jake took them trick or treating a little more. As if they needed any more candy. I can't keep Patrick out of the suckers! *sigh*

Though Jake and I didn't dress up, and we didn't do caramel apples, or pumpkins, all in all it was still a fun Halloween. Who knows. Maybe next year we will go crazy and get the Halloween decorations out!

Glenda

I do have new pictures from this Halloween coming, but in the meantime here's a great one from 2004. And yes...that is Jake!

Bring On The Awkward Years

After wiggling this tooth for 2 months (or longer) it finally fell out. Maddy was so pleased and she now loves to read out loud to us with her new (and hopefully temporary) lisp. Very sweet.

What I don't understand is that she wouldn't wear a cute dress I bought her to school because she thought her friends wouldn't like it, yet she couldn't wait to show off her new goofy grin. Kids...

Jake didn't kill the garden...

In fact, while the kids and I were in Utah, our little garden had quite the growth spurt!

In ten days our peas went from being a couple of inches tall, to this...
there are even blossoms!


This is the arugula that Miranda and I planted in a pot on a whim. It looks like we are almost ready for a salad now!

Here is how the rest of the plants are doing...
The beans in the right front corner look like they may be blossoming soon. I can't wait for fresh bean and parsley soup! Yummy!

We have also enjoyed our first veggies our of the garden this week...
Radishes! The girls are LOVING them. I'm so surprised! I shouldn't be. It's the regular veggies I have a hard time getting them to eat, like potatoes...go figure!

Thanks Jake for taking such good care of the garden and house while we were away. We love you!!!

Gardening Take Two

Okay, this time I think we got it right...

It only took me an extra day to move the forms to a new "sunnier" area of the yard so we were once again ready to plant. Maddy wrote out our plant markers for us and Miranda and I drew up a map of our garden so we could keep track of what is where.

We got all of our supplies ready and waited for Jake to get home. We forgot that it has been getting darker much earlier, but we still managed to get most of the seeds planted and watered anyways.

The girls were very excited about planting the holly hock seed they got in the mail from Nana, as well as the sunflower and snapdragons seeds that they picked out.

Patrick was content just to play with the hose and make lots of mud. True boy...

We planted around the 24th of September (yes I'm slow updating), but now you can see how our little garden is progressing.

We have beans...
peas...
sunflowers, (top photo) cucumbers and a bunch of radishes in that one crowded box down there. The radishes were the first to come up and gave us hope that the rest of our seeds would eventually come up as well.

So far this gardening thing is a lot of fun. Either Patrick or Miranda helps me water every morning and Maddy does it in the evenings. We all get so excited when we find a new start or find that something is noticeably taller.

I will still be surprised to see if/when we get any veggies from any of these teeny little starts, but so far so good...

Houston, We Have A Problem...

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we have been bitten by the gardening bug and have been busily preparing an area and building boxes to house our newly purchased seeds.

Today, with the help of my Mother-in-law, I mixed the mulch/peat moss/perculite mixture and filled one of the boxes. I then hammered on the grid to separate the box into one foot squares and coiled the soaker hose around the inside of the box.

Looks great right? (besides our somewhat silly choice of color) But as I checked on it throughout the day something was missing. . . sunlight! See how only the top is getting some? Yeah, that's not a good sign.

Only one of the boxes gets full sunlight and I don't even think it is 5 hours. Hmmm. I think we may be relocating a garden tonight. Doh!


At least Patrick and Jake got to be manly and use tools. I think they were both equally pleased. Patrick has been toting around his play toolbox and tools ever since!

Even while he sleeps...
Well, we still have a little while until we have actual plantings in our garden, but we are at least enjoying our time spent together anyway. Anyone else having better luck out there?

Patrick Is A Bow-way...

Getting Ready To Garden!

For most states this is harvest season. Time for picking final fruit and vegetable crops. Time for pie-making and canning. Time for tilling compost into your soil to prep for next year's crop.

...not so for us here in Arizona! We are right at the beginning of planting season. Feels very strange to be thinking of planting beans, carrots, broccoli and cabbage, while the rest of our friends and relatives up north are frantically finding ways to cook up and store those tomatoes before the first frost! (really, I'm not sure how it is up there right now...just guessing)

I don't know if I told any of you here about this book, but it was the focus of a church lesson last Sunday about how to prepare a garden here in Arizona. I have actually read this whole book, and so it was the first Sunday in a long time that I wasn't totally lost!

I got all re-excited about starting my garden after finding out that THIS is the time of year to start planting. Still feels so backwards, but we're going to give it a try. Jake and I built our frame for a 4' by 4' square foot garden today, and if I wasn't so tired I would post a picture.

Don't worry, as this project moves along I have a feeling I will be posting many pictures. That's one thing I know how to do to. Take lots of pictures. Glad my skills are going to finally come in handy around here!

Night all! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend...

Tagged!

My friend Tina tagged me to share 6 things about me that you may not know. I feel like I've been doing an awful lot of talking about myself, so instead I'll share 6 things about my family.

1. Star Wars is our favorite movie(s). (old or new)
2. Everyone here gets really excited when we have breakfast food for dinner.
3. Out favorite outings usually involve parks, animals or water.
4. It tends to be really loud at our house, especially at dinner and on game nights.
5. We're all big readers and not big tv watchers.
6. Regrettably, I have turned all of my kids into Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz fans. *note to self* must get edited cds!

That's all I could really think of right now. Instead of tagging 6 people, I'll just let those interested volunteer. (I'll only start naming people if I don't get volunteers!) Link back to me in my comments if you want to play along. I would love to hear what makes your family different/interesting/strange!

p.s. Kris, I know you were tagged too so you're off the hook...this time!

Back to School and Stuff...

Back to school time and we couldn't be happier! Well, everyone minus Patrick who is having some serious withdrawl from his 'sissys'. He loves those little girls and does not like to wake up to an empty house! Good thing I'm around to keep him entertained. Contstantly.

Maddy is now in the second grade and even though she was figdety and shy the first day (see above picture) she loves her teacher and is very excited to have one of her best friends in her class this year. Her reading level continues to amaze Jake and I. She has discovered Junie B. Jones and entertains us all by reading to us each evening.

Brownie meetings have started again for Maddy's girl scout troop and I took on the fun/challenging role as her troop leader. Most of the girls from last year are in our group again and already we have some great activities in the works. I love having this time to share with her and see her interact with her peers. It's a wonderful group of girls and they keep me optimistic about the ever approaching teenage years. (yikes!)

Miranda is still her inquisitive and feisty self! She is our little comedian that is now a "pretty-schooler." I keep correcting her, that it's PRE-school, but I think she just likes her way better. She now attends school 3 hours a day, 3 days of the week. :) I like. And so does she! She is a little smarty pants and can almost write the whole alphabet. She also loves counting to 100. all. the. time.

There are 10 boys in Miranda's class and only 4 girls (including her) and she doesn't seem to mind one bit. She gets along with all of them and likes to have playdates with either gender. She has always been really easy going in this regard. Only this one. The wet shirt was from "miss independant" wanting to brush her teeth without any help. Now that she is in school she knows that she is officially grown up!

I had to get a picture of Patrick on the first day of school too of course! He was all smiles until we left Miranda at her school and then went home. He is now more of a Momma's boy than ever, wanting me to hold him all the time (I haven't done that for months!) and sitting on my lap while we play legos/starwars guys/cars. It's a little tiring, but I know that (hopefully) he's just adjusting to the school schedules as well.

I have a feeling that as soon as it cools down some more, he and I will be spending a lot of time together at our neighborhood parks. And we will enjoy them even more now that they are shaded! Yay! The shades were a nice surprise to see when we returned from Utah. First lights, now shades...I may never leave the neighborhood!

Is it bad that I'm not weeping over the fact that my kids are in school? They seem to be happy and I'm getting lots done at home. It's a win-win wouldn't you say?

Home Again...

I guess I have waited long enough to update. I have been home for 5 days now, and was trying to not blog until my house got back in order, but that may never happen! 6 weeks away makes for a lot of catch-up work later!

I can't complain though. The kids and I had a wonderful time visiting family and enjoying the 'milder' weather in Utah. We were very excited to have Jake come up and join us on our week long trip to Oregon, as we all missed him incredibly.

We drove a lot, stayed at a different hotel every night, and saw some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen! To say I took a lot of photos would be an understatement. I went a little camera crazy on this trip! I seriously had my head stuck out of the car window snapping photos most of the drive.

This is a small portion of my photos that Jake put in a set for me. I believe that it only covers 4 or 5 days on the coast. You can click here if you want to see a sampling of the places we explored.

I was able to get in a couple of runs while we were away, and one morning I found this cool 'floating' home neighborhood. I just loved the style of these houses and the idea of living on a river. These homes are on the Columbia Gorge River, just outside of downtown Portland...This is a cute little park overlooking the river. My kids were excited to go to a park and just play and swing. They got to spend quite a bit of time at the beach one day, but most of the time we were in the car or walking around. This night was a good break for them and us!Does anyone recognize this beach? This is Cannon Beach and it is where Goonies was filmed. All of us were excited to stay in Astoria and see this familiar view. We had to geek out on the radios by saying every funny line we could remember from the movie. I have to say, I think we said them all...and yes, we are a little nerdy!

I would love to go back and spend a couple more days exploring some of the coastal towns that we passed through. There was just so much to see and it would've added too much more time on our trip.

Well, that's most of the pictures of ONE of our weeks away. I guess I only have 5 more weeks of lost time to catch up on! It was so great to see many of you on our vacation, and we feel very lucky to have such great friends and family out there! Thanks for making it a memorable summer for us!

Sorry that I have been terrible at updating. Not having Internet access at my parents is driving me crazy!

We are all enjoying our time in Utah visiting with friends and family and of course, loving the weather! Jake has been at home, but Friday he flies up to meet us for our driving trip to Oregon. The kids and I haven't seen him for almost a month and we are all missing him a lot! It will be nice to have a week of being non-single again too!

We have been so bad about bedtimes, schedules and eating habits, but that's what summer is all about right?! The kids and their grandma do have a morning routine of taking the weeds from the garden and feeding the llamas, goats and the deer (if he's not being shy). I think my kids will miss this quite a bit when we go home to Arizona.







Even though it's super crazy hot in AZ, we still are missing it and all of our friends. I try to catch up on blogs when I get a chance, but it's not often, so if I am not commenting it's just because of my limited online time! I promise I am still thinking of all of you anyway!

Have a great week and I'll be sure to post some pictures from our trip! Happy Wednesday!

More To Come...

But for now, I leave you with the Patrick Show...always entertaining...

Catching My Breath...

May has been quite the month for our family.

We've had birthday parties, girl scout camp, Mother's Day and a whole bunch of other stuff to keep us busy. I thought it would be easiest just to post a bunch of photos to sum up our month. That's all that you all come here for anyway, right?

This picture is of the lovely Mother's Day dinner that we had. The girls set the table, helped make the dessert (that you will see in a minute), and made some adorable cards for me.

After I chopped up the basil for the pasta, the girls really wanted to plant the rest of it and see if it would grow. It was so cute that I used it as our centerpiece as well, pretty, don't you think? And yes, Maddy is putting jelly on the rosemary-garlic bread. (that's Maddy for you)

My two handsome boys with their fresh haircuts. (they both need another one already!) I am now the official hair cutter in the family. For everyone but myself that is...

I thought I better post one shot of the mom on Mother's day even if we did have the classy 'tub o butter' on the table. (nice)

The incredible brownies that I posted the recipe for last week. Maddy now will ask, "are we making brownies, or those really rich ones." So true Maddy, so true...



Jake decided to take the day off work for his birthday on the 15th, so we had lunch at The Olive Mill. I had never noticed the sign before. I had to take a picture because of the part about unsupervised children. Too funny!
This is a cute little herb garden in front of the mill. I loved the little paths between the rows. I just may steal this idea for my salsa garden!

I sure take a lot of food photos lately, don't I? I guess I just love food! This was the first time we had eaten at the new restaurant at the mill and it was very tasty! We've been there to get gelato or bread before and of course oil, but we will definitely have to back to eat again.

Patrick was so pleased to have his own Jones soda. I love his smug little smile in this photo...cracks me up!

We let the kids play in the fountain a little. It was getting pretty hot and it made them both happy and occupied which in turn helped Jake and I finish our lunches in peace. All good things. And the sign didn't say anything about keeping kids away from the fountain...


The birthday boy. I think this was the first time I have seen Jake actually relax for a while, so I take that as a sign that he liked our impromptu lunch outing.

I'm glad that Maddy can now stop telling everyone that her mom is older than her dad now. Well at least for the next 6 months anyway! She still LOVES to remind me. I'm hoping that she grows out of that soon.


This is the only 'birthday' type shot we got of Jake. I think we had about 3.5 minutes to celebrate before we had to take off to go ice skating with Maddy's Girl Scout troop. So basically a normal night for the five of us. Feels like we have been doing a lot of rushing around lately.

The girls and I on the ice. See that terrified look on Miranda's face? She does that when we go swimming too. I don't get it. She is the wild one in the family, but when she even felt that I was loosening my grip on her she would FREAK OUT. You know, like digging her nails into my arms and screaming. But she actually really loved ice skating. She just didn't want me to let go. At all...


This was Maddy's second time skating, so she warmed up to it pretty quickly. The first few times she didn't want to let go of the edge, but after taking half an hour to go around the rink twice, I decided to practice my backwards skating skills and pull her behind me. She wasn't thrilled about letting go of that ledge at first, but she was a trooper and slowly relaxed.

I switched off taking Miranda and Maddy around the rink while Jake and Patrick played video games in the arcade. Patrick loves all of the race car games and throws huge fits when we pry his little hands off of the steering wheels. Yep, he sure acts like a 2 year old now!

After all of that prior excitement, I had to take a little vacation with my girlfriends to a really nice resort in Paradise Valley. Actually, it was my Mother's Day gift, but I couldn't really be away on that day now could I? So I waited a whole week to go...

Here are my friends Cresta and Lindsey modeling the cozy robes offered at the resort. (don't they look cute?) This is the view from our little patio area behind our room. Nice, huh?

Apparently this pool has music playing underwater, but we were so busy lounging on our rafts, or laying in the sun, that we didn't really spend much time underwater. The pool attendants were great too. They laid our towels out on our chairs and brought us ice water, chilled pineapple and icy-cold washcloths which were heavenly! (it was over a hundred degrees that day) We stayed out there for five hours and I for one felt very pampered...

These are my friends Cresta and Kristy sharing a late dinner with me at Z Tejas in Scottsdale. We didn't leave the pool area until almost 8pm because we were so relaxed, and because we had shared some tasty quesadillas by the pool earlier. (See, there I go talking about food again!)

It was so nice just to take our time and not have to worry about our kids or houses for one night. Thanks to Jake, Rob and Dustin for being willing to give us the chance to take this much needed break!


Well, there is a rundown of most of the major events in May minus Jake quitting his job and getting a new one, the Jetta dying last Monday and us having to buy a new car on Tuesday (before Jake was unemployed), and Maddy having her very last day of school as a first grader. I'll have to post more about girl's camp and these other things later.

Whew! All caught up. Now I can enjoy the last day of the holiday weekend tomorrow. Hope you are all enjoying it too...